News & Public Affairs

Legend and romance drip from the lacy balconies of New Orleans as surely as Spanish moss drips from the branches of the city's ancient oaks. In New Orleans, Faye Longchamp is happy just to get up in the morning and go to work. But centuries of tragedy shadow the city--wars, slavery, and a monumental flood that killed a thousand people and still threatens to wash all that history away.

St. Petersburg neurosurgeon David McKalip resigned today as President-Elect of the Pinellas County Medical Association, approximately 24 hours after news broke over the internet of an e-mail he sent of an image of President Obama as a witch doctor dressed in a loin cloth and with a bone in his nose.

Dr. McKalip is a strong critic of plans for health care reform, and has been part of public protests against it in recent weeks in the Tampa Bay Area.

Tampa Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Castor announced today that she is filing an amendment that will require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate payment rates with pharmaceutical manufacturers for prescription drugs.

Congresswoman Castor spoke with WMNF from her Capitol Hill today to speak about that and other issues, with the Health Care legislation ongoing in the House of Representatives.

Castor is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the committee...

A new partnership between the University of South Florida and a private company has introduced four hybrid cars to the Tampa campus for students to rent by the hour as a substitute for owning a car. But there appears to be only slight interest from students who donât own an automobile.

WeCar is the name of the car-sharing arm of Enterprise Rent-A-Car that began accepting USF members on Thursday. Students, faculty, and staff can pay a $...

With key Congressional committees set to take action on health care this week, local residents gathered in front of Senator Bill Nelson's staff offices throughout the state to deliver a letter asking the senator to consider a public health insurance option.

In Tampa, that meant lobbying in front of the federal building on Florida Avenue, just north of downtown. Approximately 100 people demonstrated there with signs and banners.

The Tampa Tribune reported this morning that a federal judge in Tampa this morning denied a request to order the rehiring of a Lutz Army reservist Stefan Frederick Cook. Cook claims he was fired from his job after fighting his deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds President Barack Obama is not an American citizen.

U.S. District Judge Richard Lazzara said he threw out the case because Cookâs petition did not comply with local court rules, as it was not accompanied by a complaint.

In his press conference last night President Obama said that the only way all Americans could be covered by health insurance is to enact a single-payer plan here in the U.S.

Single-payer is, essentially, covering every person in the country with a government sponsored health insurance. While the president is not advocating such a plan, several different single-payer plans have been proposed in Congress. The oldest of whi...

Tampa City Council member Mary Mulhern has just returned from a 5 day trip to Cuba. But she appeared less than enthusiastic today when a colleague said the Council should take time out to discuss promoting international trade with the communist island.

The proposal came from Councilwoman Linda Saul-Sena, who asked that a special discussion take place on the issue next month.

The U.S. housing market âappears to be healingâ. Those were the words of Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, speaking after the organizationâs new report showed re-sales of homes and condominiums rose 3.6% last month, the highest level since last October.

However, the report did say that distressed properties accounted for nearly a third of such sales. Thatâs not that different than a month before, with the median price now dragged down to $...

Three St. Petersburg City Council races have more than two candidates. That requires them to compete in a primary election on September 1st. Candidates for district 5 - which includes Pinellas Point - and District 6 â which includes southeast St. Pete - faced off today at the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club in downtown.

Fourteen months ago Karl Nurse was appointed to fill the vacant District 6 seat...

The $31 million dollar plan to make Sarasota the new spring training home for the Baltimore Orioles was barely approved today.

The City Commission of Sarasota agreed on a 3-2 vote to turn over Ed Smith Stadium to the County. But disagreement on adding an amendment to limit the Cityâs exposure to costs related to environmental impacts led two Commissioners to reject the proposal.

The issue of any remedial liability for the City surfaced on Monday, forcing the City Commissioners to d...

Welcome to WMNF's Radioactivity. I'm Rob Lorei. This Friday night a highly-praised new documentary Food, Inc. appears at the Tampa Theatre. It's all about the food industry.

(From the film's website) "In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled ...

Tuesday evening, the case of local contractor preference was brought before the Pinellas County commission in a public hearing.

The commission heard public opinion on an ordinance that will allow local contractors to receive extra points if they have a headquarters in Pinellas County. In the event of a tie in points, the local business would have the advantage.

One issue many commissioners and members of the public had with the ordinance was the terminology used in naming headquarters a...